Chapter 19 Vincenzo
Vincenzo
I watch the Dragovich brothers walk away, moving through the courtyard like they fucking own it.
And maybe they do. Maybe Arseniy’s reputation is so drenched in blood that the stone itself makes room for him.
Maybe Nikolaj’s presence is so feral and charged that people can’t help but stare even when they’re trying not to.
The girl—Maria—bolted like she saw death wearing a face too familiar. I don’t ask why, I don’t care.
There are things I won’t touch and ghosts I won’t entertain.
Whatever made her run like that is a Dragovich matter, and I have my own family’s poison to swallow.
I turn away before they’ve even crossed the garden wall.
I’ve already wasted too much of my morning watching that Russian stray smirk like he didn’t just set fire to the air between us.
So, I move through my day like I have somewhere to be.
My schedule is carved to the bone. Knife drills, tactical lectures, diplomacy roundtable, surveillance theory.
Although it’s not theory anymore when you’ve already used half of it in real-world blackmail schemes, Vintermoor loves the illusion of structure.
I let them feed it to me. I give the professors what they want—sharp answers, sharper silences, my usual flawless control. I nod when needed, and smile when required. Not a damn soul gets under my skin, not one of them sees how tight I keep my jaw when I walk past him in the hall.
When I return to my wing that night, I’m bone-tired.
Not from the drills, not even from the workload.
But from the sheer fucking pressure it takes to keep myself contained every hour that I breathe the same air as Nikolaj Dragovich.
It’s like living inside a warhead and pretending you don’t hear the countdown.
I don’t bother turning on the lights when I strip the shirt off my back, toss it across the chair, and kick off my shoes without grace. The door shuts behind me, lock immediately engaging. This is the one space I allow myself to let go.
When I lie down, it’s with my head to the side, and one arm beneath the pillow. The world softens just enough to let me forget that I share this school with a man I should’ve buried the first time he smirked at me.
I fall into a dreamless sleep for God knows how long, before a familiar weight hits me, causing my eyes to snap open. I feel the press of a knee against my ribs, and a blade kissing the underside of my jaw.
I already know who it is from the smell—clove smoke, vodka, and a hint of that maddening cologne he wears. His thighs cage mine, his body leans forward, and he grins as if he’s savoring the feel of control while I’m still halfway between sleep and violence.
“Easy, Prince.”
Nikolaj Dragovich is shirtless, tattooed shadows coiling across his chest and arms, his hair loose around his face.
“You sleep like a prince, too,” he murmurs, too fucking amused. “Almost made me feel bad for waking you.”
“You have five seconds to move that blade.”
He presses the tip hard enough to bite into my skin. “What happens at six? You moan again like you did last week when I pinned you in the ring?”
My hands are under the sheets. One twitches toward my own hidden blade, but I stop myself. He wants me rattled. He wants the fight, and for the first time in days, I feel more awake than I have since he started sulking like a kicked dog when I began ignoring him.
“How the hell,” I say through my teeth, “did you get into my room?”
The bastard’s smile is infuriating. That lazy curve that says rules don’t apply to me, that says I’m already inside the place you thought was safe. “Aw, did you think a lock could keep me out?”
I glare up at him. “You’re not supposed to be in the East Wing.”
He tilts his head, a strand of blond hair falling into his eyes. “You say that like the walls here would stop me. You forget—your name helped fund this place, but my blood paid the men who laid the foundation.”
He shifts his weight a little; the knife pressing harder. A thin bead of heat trickles down my throat, and I can feel the tremor of his pulse through the handle.
“Answer the question,” I growl. “How did you get in?”
“Would you believe me,” he says, voice dropping lower, “if I told you I knocked?”
“Nikolaj.”
His name is muted warning on my lips, and he lets out a low hum.
He likes when I say it like that—I can see it flicker in his eyes before he hides it behind another grin, then he exhales through his nose.
“Your guards were predictable. The cameras on this floor? Easier to loop than you’d like to think.
And the lock?” He taps the blade against my throat once, a mock-gentle rhythm.
“Let’s just say money and timing can open anything. ”
“You could’ve come in the daylight.”
“Daylight’s for confessions.” His expression hardens. “I came for answers.”
The air between us thickens, every word another pull of gravity. The quiet stretches until I break it, because I have to… because silence with him is worse than any threat.
“You gonna tell me what you want, Dragovich?” I ask, letting my gaze rise slowly until I’m looking directly into those pale, ice-bitten eyes.
His smirk fades just a little. Just enough to show that maybe even he doesn’t fully know. Then he leans in and says in a tone that doesn’t match the weapon at all, “You’ve been quiet, Vieri. I don’t like it.”
“You bore me now,” I lie, my expression carved from ice.
He laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “You’re a shit liar.”
His free hand slides down my chest; a statement of power—dominance disguised as curiosity. My skin reacts in betrayal. I clench my jaw as his thumb drags slowly across my sternum.
“You hate that I got to you,” he whispers. “You hate it more that I know.”
“I hate a lot of things,” I murmur, “but you’re not interesting enough to top the list.”
Another lie, and we both know it.
His hand moves lower and my pulse kicks like a drum. I shove upward with sudden force, twisting my body under him, but he shifts with me, legs locking tighter, dagger catching the edge of my throat. A shallow sting flares where he drags it.
“I should gut you for this,” I growl.
“You should,” he says, leaning in so close our mouths nearly touch. “But you won’t because you want this. You want me.”
“I want you dead.”
His grin widens, sharp and wild. “Then make it fun.”
He lifts his hand, fingers brushing hair away from my ear. I feel the air shift as he leans in, the cold tip of the blade dragging down slowly, delicately, until it rests at the hollow beneath my jaw.
Then I feel the sharp bite of metal, the precision of someone practiced. Not random or messy. Intentional.
He’s marking me the same fucking way I marked him in the chapel. An X carved beneath my ear, a mirrored brand of disrespect.
“There,” he says softly, almost tender. “Now we match.”
“Get off me,” I snap, but the edge in my voice is dull. Strained. And he hears it.
“Make me.”
His fingers spread slowly against my chest again, testing if I’ll strike. I should. I know I should. But I just stare at him, muscles locked, jaw tight, pulse hammering in my throat so loud I swear he can hear it.
“You’re so used to being obeyed,” he murmurs. “So used to being wanted by people too afraid to touch you. But you don’t want devotion, Vieri. You want defiance. You want someone who doesn’t flinch when you bare your teeth.”
I exhale slowly. My hand moves under the sheets again, and his knife twitches in response. “Try it, and I’ll slit your throat.”
I raise my eyes, bored. “Then do it, because I’m getting fucking sick of this push and pull.”
We lock there—his blade against my skin, my silence louder than any scream. And in the stillness, in the quiet fury between our bodies, I feel it.
That need.
That sickness.
That mirrored hunger that neither of us dares name.
He lowers the knife an inch, leans in, his mouth just beside my ear. “I could be good, you know, ” he whispers, and that’s what does it. That word—good—cut from his mouth like a lie dressed in lace.
“I could be so good for you,” he repeats, quieter, and his lips brush the corner of my jaw when he speaks. “Let you fuck the fight out of me. Let you win.”
“There’s no victory in using you,” I growl.
“No,” he agrees, dragging his tongue slowly across the blood he spilled beneath my ear. “But there is pleasure.”
And then, he licks the wound.
My breath hitches sharply through my teeth as heat flares down my spine. The movement isn’t sexual, but it’s obscene. It’s territorial. Claiming. His mouth closes over the mark for just a beat too long, lips curling around my skin and tasting what he did to me.
“You can’t keep ignoring me,” he whispers. “You can try. You can play your little heir games and pretend you’re not drowning every time I touch someone else. But you know how this ends.”
I stay quiet. Breathing hard. My pulse is a drumbeat behind my teeth.
“It ends with your name in my mouth,” he murmurs, leaning back. “Or mine in yours.”
He moves his hand again, dragging the flat of the blade down my neck, my chest, tracing the line of my sternum with calculated ease. His weight shifts forward as he lowers his face to mine, eyes locked on my mouth like he’s starving.
“Pick one, Prince.”
My fingers twitch against the sheets again; he feels it and smiles. I grab his wrist, twist the blade out of reach, and slam my other hand into the back of his neck—dragging him down, crushing our mouths together like punishment.
He growls against my lips and bites.
It’s not a kiss. It’s a fucking detonation.
Teeth. Tongue. Bruised breath and swallowed curses.
He tastes like smoke and blood and fury, and I drink it in like oxygen, like I’ve been suffocating for weeks and only now remembered what breathing is.
His fingers curl in my hair, and I arch up into him, grinding hard, and he gasps against my mouth like he forgot who he was supposed to be.
Let him forget.
Let him fucking fall.